Is unraid for me ?

[brian881]

I Need a nas to store all my Photography and 4k Video work. We would like to access then NAS from the LAN 1gigabit netwrok with (3 simultaneous user)  but also remotely. 

I would like to build this NAS with the following parts I already have but Not sure it is enough for 4k video.

CPU: AMD FX8320
Motherboard: GA-78LMT-USB3
RAM: ECC if the motherboard supports it 

Do you think Unraid is good for my use?

Would I run into problems with this hardware?

Is it unsafe to use NON etc memory if the motherboard doesn't support it?

 

[Frank1940]

I think you need to describe exactly what your workflow is anticipated to be a bit better.  Are you going to be storing the project you are currently working locally on each workstation and using the server to archive completed projects?  Or you expect to be using the server for real time editing of current project?

[brian881]

Yes I will be storing projects on my local workstation if they need to be edited etc. I will he using the nas to archeive completed projects and raw files for later use . We will not be using the server for real time editing. One of my editers will download files to their local machine to edit and then upload finished files.

[Frank1940]

I recall that several photographers are using unRAID in a very similar mode as you are proposing.

 

One question that I have is why the AMD FX8320?  unRAID being run strictly as a NAS does not need that much horsepower and definitely not a GPU.  Take a look at the spec's for my two servers for a couple of setups that have more than enough horsepower to do everything you want without breaking a sweat.

[SSD]

What size are your 4k video files you work with?

[brian881]

The 4k video files are about 5gb each.
I'm looking to build this NAS with about 20tb. 

[Frank1940]

15 minutes ago, brian881 said:

I'm looking to build this NAS with about 20tb. 

Just be sure that you start out with drives between 5TB and 8TB.  (Look for the 'sweet' spot)  This would allow you to get to expand your your data storage to between 25TB and 40TB without any additional plugin boards.  I know that a lot of Professionals want to store their pictures in RAW format and they are big files.  You will probably be surprised as how fast your data requirements will grow...

 

You also will want a good size case to hold these drives.  I would also recommend that you use drive cages that allow to add new drives and swap out old/defective drives without opening the case.  Disturbing the connectors on hard drives when adding or removing drives has generated a lot of problems for unRAID users (and probably the case for many other Server users) over  the years. 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Frank1940

[SSD]

I know a BluRay can be 30G and a 4K could be much bigger. You can buy 10Gb lan cards to make huge transfers from array to workstation, and workstation to cache much faster. 5G shouldn't be too bad, but time is money. Might want to consider if these transfer times are problematic. They are remarkably inexpensive. I'm not an expert on setting them up, but others here have done it.

[tdallen]

unRAID briefly caches writes to the server in system memory - standard Linux stuff.  If you are typically writing 5GB files, you will really benefit from having at least 5GB of memory available for the transfer.  While a system with 8GB of memory may have 5GB available at any given time depending on what Dockers and Plugins you are running, I'd put 16GB in it just to be sure.  File transfers really fly when you have available memory for caching the write.  I'm trying to remember if there are system parameters for tuning the way unRAID uses memory, anyone smarter than me recall?

[brian881]

Do you think unraid is Reliable as a NAS server os for a business with important files? What is the recommended way to back up?

I keep reading forums saying that  freenas zfs is much better etc. 



 

[ashman70]

unRAID is a perfect OS for a NAS and many other things however I would not use it in a business environment, it is more suited for home/personal use. ZFS has it's advantages, certainly and it's worth looking into if you are curious or considering using it.

[Frank1940]

53 minutes ago, brian881 said:

Do you think unraid is Reliable as a NAS server os for a business with important files? What is the recommended way to back up?

 

It is usable if you recognize that it will be slower on Writes than most true RAID servers and is not intended for use where you are doing transaction type database work.  (Think of ticket reservation systems as an example of this.)  I would not use a lot of VM or Dockers that access the Internet in a business environment. To save few bucks in combining these into a common box is not a good idea...

 

Regarding backups.  With any server, you really need a secondary backup.  One that is preferably off-site.  Remember the damage of a physical loss or damage from theft, fire, water and lightning will as probable as two disk failure with normal system maintenance and monitoring.

[tdallen]

1 hour ago, brian881 said:

Do you think unraid is Reliable as a NAS server os for a business with important files?

For your use I think it would work well.  You mention 3 simultaneous users.  If they are simply saving large files to the unRAID server every once in a while then that fits the unRAID profile quite well.  I'd move to FreeNAS and ZFS for multiple users who are hitting the server at the same time, reading/writing lots of small files or interacting with large database files.  I agree with Frank1940, I would not use lots of Dockers or VMs if your goal is a bulletproof NAS.

[ijuarez]

1 hour ago, ashman70 said:

unRAID is a perfect OS for a NAS and many other things however I would not use it in a business environment, it is more suited for home/personal use. ZFS has it's advantages, certainly and it's worth looking into if you are curious or considering using it.

 

I think it depends on his business, yes large DB driven apps prolly not, but most of us use unraid with nextcloud and other DB type apps and it does fine. He also did not state what he currently is using to keep his data on (could be a drobo). ZFS is better but i feel better that if my unraid failed i can take the disk and still read the data whilst a zfs setup might no fair as well. Just my 2 cents.

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, brian881 said:

What is the recommended way to back up?

 

Each has pros and cons, you could have both with one of them acting as a backup for the other, it's what I do for one of my servers, it's the best way to try both and have backups at the same time.

[Frank1940]

And unRAID storage capacity can easily expended at any time.  The only requirement is that Parity Disk(s) have to be larger than any of the data disks.  You could start out with two 8Tb disks--- one parity and one data with a total capacity of 8TB.  Two months from now, you could add a third 8TB disk and have a 16TB of storage.  Four months after that you see a Black Thursday deal for a 6TB drive at half price.  You get that and now you have 22Tb of storage.  It takes about fifteen minutes of time on your part to add another disk.  It takes the server a bit  longer depending on whether you precleared the disk ahead of time.  (If the disk was precleared, it takes about twenty minutes from start to finish with the new disk being totally available for use.) 

[brian881]

We will be using this NAS to save files to the NAS from at most 2 users at the same time and it will be accessed by multiple(3) users to download image files and videos. On a daily basis there will be 4 users using the NAS mostly to download files to local machines and there will be 1 user uploading files to the NAS all at the same time. 

Edited June 30, 2017 by brian881

[Frank1940]

Based on your initial spec's for hardware, the bottleneck will probably be the 1Gb network speed on downloading.  If upload speed is vital to you, you might want to consider using a 500GB  SSD cache drive to get to the same point on the upload side.  But you are probably going to hit that bottleneck with any server setup unless you are willing to invest a goodly pile of money into a 10Gb network.  (A quick look showed that entry level 10Gb switches begin at $500 and up...)

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Frank1940

[brian881]

Do you think UNRAID is ment for 4 simultaneous users Reading and Writing?

[Frank1940]

Well, I have streamed two BluRay .iso's on a 100Mb branch of my home network (Back before I upgraded all of switches to 1Gb) at the  same time and didn't have an issue.  Remember that unRAID stores the actual files on single disk rather then spreading them across multiple disks.  That means that the actual read speed is disk limited as only one disk is involved. (In fact, only one disk will be spun up if I am playing a single movie.)  Writing to the array is another issue as the write process is more complicated and that is the reason that is slower.   An SSD cache disk (or a cache pool if redundancy is wanted for protection until the data is transferred to the array) will over come this problem if write speed is crucial. 

[tdallen]

31 minutes ago, brian881 said:

Do you think UNRAID is ment for 4 simultaneous users Reading and Writing?

When you say simultaneously, do you literally mean simultaneously?  I just did a couple of tests, it takes about a minute for me to copy a 4.5GB file from my unRAID server to a desktop over a 1GB network.  If you literally are going to have 4 people, in the space of a minute, copying multi-gig files from your server to their desktops then you have some issues to think about.

 

First, my unRAID server can max out a 1GB network copying two files at the same time and a faster server might be able to do it with just one file.  This would be a factor for FreeNAS/ZFS as well - like Frank1940 said you'd need 10GB networking if you really want to support multiple users copying very large files at exactly the same time.

 

Second, and this is relevant only to unRAID, if the files you are copying from the unRAID server are on the same physical disk then things are going to slow down.  On my server things start to slow down copying two very large files from the same disk, you'd really notice it with four.  Since unRAID tends to pack files onto one disk at a time as they are added, this could be a real issue depending on what files people are accessing.  This is an area where FreeNAS/ZFS is superior at the expense of a more complex solution.  Again, this is only an issue if people are literally accessing several multi-gig files in the same instant.